What Made D2's Itemization so good?

You can do runs all day and not find a Ber rune. That's why I said I don't get an infinity within the first two months. But the chance was increased by 6 times roughly. And the area you do the runs in doesn't matter as long as it's a tc85 area, which the CS is.

I don't intend to waste an entire day of my life
I'd just clock some runs and count the runes overall. The probabilites to find a special rune are given on a per rune drop basis iirc. I have found this chart regarding that:

Concerning the area to go to, I feel, I'm a little ahead of you: The CS has those ghosts which can't drop regular equipment and therefore have an increased chance to drop a rune.

edit: And yes to that 1.10+ was way harder than the game was before statement. That patch changed everything.

Concerning the area to go to, I feel, I'm a little ahead of you: The CS has those ghosts which can't drop regular equipment and therefore have an increased chance to drop a rune.

I didn't know that, but I always did CS runs anyway.

But what do you want to achieve with your calculations after you have done a few runs? Show us that it's not very probable to get 2 Ber Runes in one ladder season?

There's nothing to achieve aside from personal knowledge. The table already shows how drastic that increase in 1.13b (released in 2010) was. After that you'd need about 3k rune drops to get those 2 BERs. Prior to that, for the duration of about 9 years, it required 27k rune drops. And since MF had no effect on them, there was no way to brute force them like Uniques or Sets.

You do agree, that it was highly unreasonable to achieve before the latest change?

So, I got to play a little D2 after some time. I have used my Hammerdin for this:

This is the latest version of the game modified by PlugY, which enables a shared stash and ladder-only content. I suppose, you recognize the items by their icons. The highest rune is VEX, which you can aquire by cubing ISTs from the Countess for example.

After 7 times this (players 8):

I gathered a grand total of 9 runes. The good runs lasted about 8 minutes, let's not talk about those where I ran mindlessly into some fast mana burn shit

So, while this sample size is waaaaay to small to give conclusive results, I think, it's not too far-fetched to grant someone the ability to find 10 runes per hour in tc85 areas. In 1.13 that someone would roughly need 140 hours of grind for one BER rune. The second wouldn't take as long because of cubing possibilities. I shouldn't call this impossible though
Pre 1.13 however, that same guy would have required 1,350 hours for just 1 BER rune, which is ridiculous

Yeah, sounds realistic, while TC85 runs in the Ancient Tunnels are a lot more effective with a cold sorc because there are just no cold immunes at all (considering the lack of enigma when a ladder season just starts).

The most frequent high rune for me was Sur, which is the direct predecessor to a Ber rune. Once I got a Ber rune in my first ladder week. I also found a lot of Lo runes, also not too far away from Ber. While I am still a fan of really really rare drop chances for the best items in a game (which high runes definitely are), I think with 1.13 they found a sweet spot. The runes are still really rare, considering I played a lot and had a drop rate of (just a guess from my memories) around 1-3 per week. This allowed me to equip a lot of characters each season.

Before the increased drop rates I didn't even bother thinking about potential high rune drops. It was similiar to the current state of Diablo 3 legendaries, which are just garbage in most cases.

The runes are still really rare, considering I played a lot and had a drop rate of (just a guess from my memories) around 1-3 per week.

Did you play 100-300 hours per week? I wouldn't expect you to clear CS much faster than me without a serious gear advantage. And I doubt, that another zone is as effective.

I can clear the CS within the first week of a ladder with a sorc. I kill everything with Blizzard that is not immune and lord de seis will suffer from my mercenary. Depending on the other affixes from lord de seis, a run can be as fast as 2 minutes, but it can also take 5 minutes.

And Ancient Tunnels (cold sorc especially) or TC85 areas in act 1 are a lot more effective if the CS makes trouble.

Also you should consider that only Ber has 1:1xxx out of all rune drops. But there are 8-9 highrunes that are rare enough to be excited about. So let it be 1:2xx to get ANY rune from Gul upwards and I get ~10 runes/hour, this will make one of those runes (lower ones more frequently of course) drop at an average of every 20-30 runs. Actually they drop less frequently than this calculation, but even 100 runs per week are not very much if you play a lot (3 hours per day at least).

The runes are still really rare, considering I played a lot and had a drop rate of (just a guess from my memories) around 1-3 per week.

Did you play 100-300 hours per week? I wouldn't expect you to clear CS much faster than me without a serious gear advantage. And I doubt, that another zone is as effective.

I can clear the CS within the first week of a ladder with a sorc. I kill everything with Blizzard that is not immune and lord de seis will suffer from my mercenary. Depending on the other affixes from lord de seis, a run can be as fast as 2 minutes, but it can also take 5 minutes.